THE DUKE OF DEVONSHIRE ON POLITICAL. UNIVERSITY CHANCELLORS.
IT is very difficult to think of Lord Hartington as the Duke of Devonshire, for to some extent it seems like an attempt to merge the greater character in the less,—the statesman in the grandee. That, however, is not the true view of the case. Even though a dukedom be in some sense an encumbrance to the higher class of statesmen, it. is an encumbrance only because Dukes so seldom rise to be statesmen, not because there is any incongruity in a statesman becoming a Duke. The Duke of Devonshire is the last man who would let his rank hinder him from serving his country. And as he will be quite as willing to serve his country as a Duke, as he was when he was a Member of the House of Commons, it will probably turn out that his dukedom will only enhance his social influence without in any way impeding the exercise of his political gifts. Certainly the first speech he has made as Duke of Devonshire is not wanting in his usual breadth and sagacity of view. We had many of us thought that it was perhaps hardly his wisest course to accept the Chancellorship of the University of Cam- bridge, when his own interests and efforts had run so little in academical channels. But those who thought so were wrong, and the Duke has explained with perfect clearness why they were wrong. " The Universities had been well advised," he said, in so shaping their course as to " place themselves more closely in connection with the life of the nation," and one course of action by which they could best secure this was " the selection of their highest officials from the ranks of politicians rather than from those of the learned but secluded leaders of science ; and he did not think that in that they had failed to exercise a sound. discretion." In a word, it is an English instinct for every specially distinct and distinguished class to associate itself with the external world by finding intermediate links between itself and that world. The Universities endeavour to make use of great politicians as links between them and the national life. These poli- ticians know better than scholars, or students of the secrets of Nature, what the world. will expect of Universities, and how the Universities can best contribute to the well-being of the nation. In this way the present Duke of Devon- shire may even do more than his father to contribute to the usefulness and popularity of the University of Cambridge. The late Duke was himself a man of science, and was hardly in any true sense a politician. The present Duke is a vigorous politician, and hardly in any true sense either a scholar or a man of science, and for that very reason he may, by his advice and influence, keep the University more effectually in sympathy with popular feeling than even his father. And those who would. have had him decline the honour because he is not a scholar or a student, would have had him decline it for the very reason which makes him most useful to the University,—that he is not so much a man of academical rank as a statesman who, with ample respect for science and scholarship, knows well how important it is to keep up the respect of the nation for science and scholarship, and therefore to keep up and extend the popularity of science and scholarship amongst the ranks of the people.
In truth, the Duke of Devonshire knows much more than this. He knows that one of the greatest of all the advantages of England. is that in no class is there any desire to keep well aloof from other classes, that the caste feeling does not prevail anywhere, that in every department of life there is perfect willingness to welcome cadets from other departments of life,—the consequence being that there is none of that envy and hatred between the aspirants to power and the possessors of power, between the aspirants to rank and the possessors of rank, between the aspirants to wealth and the possessors of wealth, between the aspirants to knowledge and the possessors of knowledge, between the aspirants to culture and the possessors of culture, which are to be found. in other nations, where the fissures between different castes are wider and deeper and much less easily bridged. than they are in England. The Duke of Devonshire knows, for instance, that in spite of the rapid advance of democracy, the House of Peers still retains a great deal of its political influence in England, not because it is so distinct from the people, but because it is so often reinforced by the people ; because, instead of feeling the bitterest jealousy of popular influences, it is itself ex- tremely sensitive to popular influences ; because it never ventures to defend. a lost cause with the desperate courage of a dying order ; because it fights only for causes for which a great popular minority which might at any moment be turned into a popular majority, also fights ; because its Conservatism is a Conservatism for which it finds multi- tudes of recruits amongst commoners, amongst tradesmen, nay, amongst artisans and labourers,—in a word, because it belongs not to a political caste, but at worst to an outvoted but still very powerful political party. It is the same with all the other classes of the nation. Rank as rank does not stand on its blue blood. and ostracise the nouveaux riches. On the contrary, the nouveaux riches, with all their vulgarities, find only too easy an entrance into the higher ranks,—we say too easy, not because we would have the highest ranks more exclusive towards plebeians, but because we would have them more inclined to repel true vulgarity of mind and pur- pose. It is the same with the other classes : the merchants shade off quite imperceptibly into tradesmen, the tradesmen into shopkeepers, the shopkeepers into labourers. The mann- facturers are constantly reinforced by artisans who have saved money ; the engineers are constantly reinforced by ingenious workmen who have patented inventions of their own ; literature opens its arms freely to the Cobbetts and the Jefferies who bring fresh ideas and fresh modes of observing into the literary ranks ; poetry makes more in proportion of its Burns, or even its Blomfield, than it does of its Byron ; religion welcomes its Spurgeon as heartily as it wel- come its Noel or its Beresford. In England there is hardly anything but pride felt in the man who can mount from one class into the class above. And so it is also, fortunately, with science and scholarship. There is none of the academical caste feeling amongst our University men which prevents them from seeking" a great politician " as their Chancellor. Yet they naturally and wisely seek one who is not a " mere " politician, one who can see some- thing good in both the parties of the State, one who is even more a patriot than a politician, one who prefers reform and improvement to revolution and innovation, one who is a hearty Liberal without being a violent Radical. In this way, the University not only shades off the learned. class into the political class, but lends its influence even to the shading-off of one political class into another ; and in days when the political tendency of the hour is towards a new exclusiveness which is alien to the life of the nation at large, that is no slight boon even to the politicians. It will do the new political bigots of the day no harm to know that learning and culture favour political no less than moral moderation.
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